The Senate Conservatives Fund has backed Alex Mooney and several other House candidates this year. Tuesday’s West Virginia primary is its first test.

There’s no clear-cut fa­vor­ite in the crowded, sev­en-way GOP primary for Rep. Shel­ley Moore Capito’s House seat in West Vir­gin­ia, but if Alex Mooney can win the nom­in­a­tion, he won’t be the only one claim­ing vic­tory.

The Re­pub­lic­an is run­ning with the back­ing of the Sen­ate Con­ser­vat­ives Fund, one of the most ag­gress­ively anti­es­tab­lish­ment out­side groups in the GOP uni­verse — and one that mostly has kept to Sen­ate races. But SCF, whose back­ing of anti-in­cum­bent chal­lengers has earned the enmity of oth­er Re­pub­lic­ans, en­dorsed can­did­ates in a half-dozen House races this elec­tion to help put more like-minded con­ser­vat­ives in Con­gress — and cre­ate a bench of re­cruits for high­er of­fice in later years.

West Vir­gin­ia’s primary on Tues­day is the first time this year that one of those can­did­ates will face voters.

Mooney, a former state sen­at­or and state party chair­man in Mary­land, has en­joyed a fun­drais­ing ad­vant­age over his Re­pub­lic­an op­pon­ents for Capito’s seat, thanks in part to SCF’s and oth­er out­side groups’ at­ten­tion to a race that has not re­ceived much oth­er out­side scru­tiny. (Capito is leav­ing her seat to run for the Sen­ate.) Al­most all of Mooney’s dis­closed fun­drais­ing has come from out of state, and he spent over $400,000 be­fore the primary, com­pared with a little over a quarter-mil­lion dol­lars each from phar­macist Ken Reed and former George W. Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial Char­lotte Lane. Less than 5 per­cent of Mooney’s item­ized dona­tions came from West Vir­gin­ia.

Mooney has also at­trac­ted to the dis­trict an ad­di­tion­al $161,000 in out­side spend­ing, not only from SCF but from groups like the Free­dom Fron­ti­er Ac­tion Fund, Cit­izens United, and Cath­olic­Vote.org, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ter for Re­spons­ive Polit­ics. He was also en­dorsed by the Tea Party Ex­press. SCF spent more than $63,000 sup­port­ing Mooney, with most of that go­ing in­to a 60-second ra­dio ad say­ing, “It’s not enough to elect Re­pub­lic­ans to Con­gress. We need to elect con­ser­vat­ive Re­pub­lic­ans.”

The only out­side ef­fort on Lane’s be­half, from a su­per PAC de­voted to elect­ing more Re­pub­lic­an wo­men, amoun­ted to less than one-tenth of the pro-Mooney spend­ing.

Like oth­er can­did­ates backed by SCF, Mooney has spent the race play­ing up his con­ser­vat­ive cre­den­tials, cri­ti­ciz­ing Lane for her past po­s­i­tions on abor­tion and tout­ing his sup­port for gun rights and for homeschool­ing chil­dren. Cam­paign man­ager Nick Clem­ens, in an email, called Mooney “the only ma­jor con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate” in the race. But he has had to handle claims that he’s a car­pet­bag­ger look­ing for a con­gres­sion­al seat: Mooney con­sidered run­ning for Con­gress in Mary­land in 2012, briefly set­ting up an ex­plor­at­ory com­mit­tee.

The sev­en-way race is “un­pre­dict­able,” Clem­ens said, and the Char­le­ston Daily Mail re­por­ted it’s un­likely any can­did­ate gets more than 10,000 votes. But the low ex­pect­a­tions be­lie big stakes as the Sen­ate Con­ser­vat­ives Fund and oth­er groups make an un­usu­al bet on an open House seat.

The House has completed it's business for 2016 by passing a spending bill which will keep the government funded through April 28. The final vote tally was 326-96. The bill's standing in the Senate is a bit tenuous at the moment, as a trio of Democratic Senators have pledged to block the bill unless coal miners get a permanent extension on retirement and health benefits. The government runs out of money on Friday night.

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